A Novel Authentication Methodology to Detect Counterfeit PCB Using PCB Trace-Based Ring Oscillator

The existence of counterfeit products, e.g., integrated circuits (ICs) and printed circuit boards (PCBs), in the modern semiconductor supply chain has seriously jeopardized the security and reliability of electronic systems, and has also caused the loss of suppliers' profit and reputation. Most...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE access 2021, Vol.9, p.28525-28539
Main Authors: Zhang, Dongrong, Ren, Qiang, Su, Donglin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Authentication
Circuit boards
clone
Counterfeit
Counterfeiting
Electronic systems
Impedance
Integrated circuits
Logic gates
Methodology
Oscillators
overproduction
PCB authentication
Printed circuits
recycle
Ring oscillators
Scientific papers
Substrates
supply chain security
Supply chains
System-on-chip
tamper
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Summary:The existence of counterfeit products, e.g., integrated circuits (ICs) and printed circuit boards (PCBs), in the modern semiconductor supply chain has seriously jeopardized the security and reliability of electronic systems, and has also caused the loss of suppliers' profit and reputation. Most of existing research papers prevent or detect counterfeit IC and PCB substrate separately, without testing the PCB as a whole, and often require the assistance of external equipment. In this article, a novel ring oscillator-based PCB authentication (ROPA) methodology to detect counterfeit PCB through supply chain is proposed, which utilizes PCB trace-based ring oscillators (PTRO) assisted by on-chip ring oscillators, and a novel PCB signature extraction methodology. By switching the PCB to different load modes, the signature can reflect the process variations in PCB traces and overall impedance. The ROPA can provide both IC and PCB authentication independently of external equipments, and allows remote authentication for the user. The ROPA structure has shown advantageous area (0.301% on average) and power (0.355% on average) overhead when implemented on a number of benchmarks. Then the ROPA is implemented on a set of authentic and counterfeit FPGA development boards to verify the effectiveness on counterfeit detection. The results show that the proposed method provides 96.7% confidence in detecting tampered PCBs and 100% confidence in detecting overproduced, recycled, and cloned PCBs.
ISSN:2169-3536
2169-3536
DOI:10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3059100